Sunday afternoon’s game will — and based on quality, should — soon be forgotten.

But by the end of the year, this may be the game we all point back at as an illustration of whatever black magic has blessed this Raptors club with power over the dark arts.

For all but a few minutes at the end, this was bad basketball. Ugly, torpid basketball played too early in the day (1 p.m.) by teams that didn’t really seem to care.

Kyle Lowry took more breathers than usual and is clearly struggling through some sort of nagging injury — in all likelihood, his groin. Everyone else just looked as if they’d been roofied at the breakfast buffet.

The crowd also seemed oddly subdued. Somebody in the upper bowl spent the whole game blowing mournfully on a vuvuzela, and no one could work up the energy to walk over and beat him into a coma.

Coach Dwane Casey spent most of the game shrieking at people to wake up, but emerged from this odd experience seeming amused. At the half, he’d blasted the team about their early afternoon lethargy. What’d you tell them?

This year’s Raptors team is the reverse of the historical Raptors. For the first 18 years of their existence (with a few small respites), the Raptors could defined as “A basketball team of middling to low competence whose marked characteristic is losing games they should win.”

Now, in Year 19, we meet the Bizarro Raptors, the team that wins games they should by all rights lose.

Toronto has now won 10 games this year after trailing to begin the fourth quarter. Last year, they did that three times.

We can talk about a change in élan, and that exists. This team feels completely different. Guys who you thought you had pegged are different somehow. This must be what winning looks like. We haven’t had much exposure to it in this town lately.

But most of it is Lowry.

He isn’t the most talented player ever to ply his trade in Raptors colours, but he is emerging as the most important. He has become more than a star. He is a talisman. When he decides to win games, he can do so by himself.

In the final 43 seconds, he scored seven points, stole an inbounds pass and just gave off an air of such haughty confidence that Toronto could not lose.

Now, there’s something wrong with him physically. Casey called it “fatigue,” and it was charming to watch the Coach Who Cannot Tell a Lie telling a lie badly. He tried to explain that both Lowry and DeRozan would be rested going forward to keep them fresh. He said that right after DeRozan had played 11 more minutes than Lowry.

DeRozan was asked if he needed to scale back his playing time.

“I’m only 24,” he said impishly. “Kyle old.”

Lowry talked about “aches and pains.”

Is the groin one of those? “My whole body is aches and pains right now,” Lowry said. “There’s things that the training staff and myself will work on to keep the body ready to go.”

This is the ominous note underneath the score that will keep people worrying until the playoffs hit.

We still don’t know when Patrick Patterson will return — he’ll be re-evaluated after the team travels to Cleveland on Monday. Without him, the second unit is a mess.

Amir Johnson spent his usual few minutes writhing in pain on the floor late in Sunday’s contest. When it was put to Lowry that Johnson seems to hit the floor at least once a game, he and DeRozan sputtered in comic unison, “Once?!”

“You don’t know if it’s a soccer thing or what,” Casey said of Johnson’s alarming habit.

This time it was Johnson’s knee, which was heavily iced after the game. He said he’d “hyperextended” it, but that he’s fine.

This is a weird time to be a Raptors fan. You’re caught between two sort of fatalisms:

If you’re of a pessimistic mindset, you can’t help but believe that injuries will eventually undo one of the best Raptors squads ever.

If you’re an optimist, it may have occurred to you that when things go wrong with this team, all they have to do is wait for the fourth quarter to roll around.